TIE-VOTE FOR MAYOR?

County Miscount Gave Henry Lead

(Reprinted from Amboy Beacon, Dec. 8, 2010)

SOUTH AMBOY — Florida had its hanging-chads in 2000, and South Amboy’s

2010 election-outcome may hinge-upon an “identifiable ballot.”

The Middlesex County Board of Elections apparently miscounted the

provisional ballots cast in the city’s hotly-contested race for Mayor on Nov. 2,

leading to the strong likelihood of a special election on Tuesday, Jan. 18, with

the city’s voters asked to choose between the two tied candidates to

succeed Mayor John O’Leary, who decided in March not to seek an unprecedented

seventh four-year term as Chief Executive of the “Pleasant Little City.”

Despite a recount held three weeks ago which reaffirmed a one-vote lead by

Democratic City Council President Fred Henry over Independent mayoral

candidate Mary O’Connor, it now appears that the election resulted in a a tie

between O’Connor and Henry, with 1,127 votes each.

As of early this week, O’Connor and her attorney, Christopher Struben, were

still awaiting a response to a request filed a week earlier with Superior

Court Judge Philip Paley, sitting in New Brunswick, for a hearing on alleged

discrepancies in the counting of ballots in the city election.

On Monday, attorneys for the Board met with lawyers representing both her

and Henry and suggested that the Board, too, may file its own petition with

Paley to seek permission to count six provisional ballots which were

“misplaced” during the initial counting on Nov. 5 at the Board’s headquarters on

Jersey Avenue in New Brunswick.

However, O’Connor said after the meeting that she and Struben question the

integrity of those additional ballots in light of alleged “mishandling”

that led to their being opened by the Board’s staff after they were discovered

the day before Thanksgiving.

Citing ongoing investigations by the FBI Field Office in Somerset and the

state Attorney General’s Office concerning the conduct of elections at the

county level, the Board prevented O’Connor’s researchers from obtaining

access to documents needed for her court presentation until Nov. 23.

“The Board and the (Middlesex County) Clerk’s Office have lawyered-up, and

they weren’t allowing anyone to look at any documents,” O’Connor said

last week.

“When I finally got to physically-see the provisional ballots, I saw that

they made a mistake in counting a vote for Henry that shouldn’t have been

counted,” O’Connor stated early this week. “We put that into our petition to

the court, but the Board of Elections admitted today (Monday) that they made

a mistake, and it’s a tied election.”

The recount approved previously by Paley — which cost O’Connor $248 — was

conducted by the Board of Elections at its Edison voting-machine warehouse

on Friday, Nov. 19, and — as-expected — resulted in an identical outcome.

“The Board certified an election that was incorrect not once, but twice,”

O’Connor said early this week. “Meanwhile, I feel like they’ve done nothing

but put-up roadblocks.”

In the recount, Henry again received 1,075 votes to 1,061 for O’Connor on

the city’s nine voting-machines, based in various public buildings throughout

the one-square-mile municipality, for a slender 14-vote lead. This was

shaven to three votes after O’Connor received 59 Mail-In Ballots (MIBs),

formerly known as “absentee votes,” to 48 for Henry.

This is where one point where questions are expected to be raised by

Struben.

The counting of MIBs increased Henry’s unofficial vote-total to 1,106 to

1,098 for O’Connor on Election Night — a spread of eight — but that

difference was reduced to just three the following day, when a bag containing more

MIBs, reportedly from the city’s First Ward, was discovered in New Brunswick

and immediately added to the count.

O’Connor questions how the additional MIBs became separated and how they

were found.

O’Connor also received seven of the 12 provisional (challenged) ballots

counted by the Board to five for Henry, further reducing his margin to one vote.

Although 22 provisional ballots were reported to have been cast, only 12 of

them were counted by the Board at its Jersey Avenue headquarters after

eight ballots reportedly were voided by its staff, and the Board voted

unanimously to accept seven of the ballots challenged by O’Connor, rejecting only one

of them. Those seven went back into the mix with five unchallenged ballots,

and were pumped-through a counting machine, after the rest of the county’s

provisionals were counted by that device.

The counting of one of those seven is where another question was expected

to be raised by Struben.

Following the insistence of Board member Donald Katz that a vote cast by a

city employee who lives in neighboring Sayreville be counted for

non-municipal candidates only, given the fact that both South Amboy and Sayreville are

in the same Congressional District, the Board voted unanimously to allow the

counting of that ballot.

However, the law identifies such a ballot as an “identifiable ballot” that

cannot be counted, according to an informed source.

After being able to examine the ballot at Jersey Avenue, O’Connor said her

researchers noticed that “there was a sticker over his Council votes, but no

sticker over his vote for Fred Henry,” and thus the vote apparently was

counted as a vote for Henry by the Board on both Nov. 5 and Nov. 19.

At that time, the Board also left a mysterious 10th uncounted provisional

ballot — reportedly cast by a woman who voted for O’Connor, but which was

not examined by the Board — unaccounted-for.

That ballot — discovered by O’Connor’s researchers before she filed her

request for a recount — was voided reportedly because no records were found to

show that the voter had registered in-time to vote on Nov. 2. However, the

woman has insisted that she registered to vote through the state Motor

Vehicle Commission (MVC).

If her ballot had been counted, that, too, would have resulted in a tie

between O’Connor and Henry with 1,128 votes each, thereby forcing a special

election.

But if Paley rules in-favor of accepting that ballot, O’Connor would win

the election by one vote.

Another MIB, also reportedly for O’Connor, was found in the Board’s office

one week after the election, but this one was rejected unanimously by the

four-member Board because the voter allegedly did not comply with proper

procedure.

At that emergency meeting, Administrator James Vokral explained that the

ballot was “put in the wrong pile” because the outer envelope in which it was

supposed-to be mailed was not used, but was replaced with a regular brown

envelope.

The voter placed his MIB inside the proper inner envelope and sealed it,

but failed to attach his signed certificate to the inner envelope.

“This ballot would have been voided even if it had been put in the proper

pile,” Vokral said.

However, that voter is believed to have signed an affidavit claiming that

he followed the Board’s instructions before he mailed his ballot.

O’Connor and her attorney were informed by the Board more than three weeks

after the election that five more provisional ballots were discovered at its

Jersey Avenue headquarters.

O’Connor told the Amboy Beacon that she received a telephone-call at 3:15

p.m. that day: “The Board of Elections found five provisional ballots.”

In what had been believed to have been “empty envelopes” when her

researchers were at the building, five additional uncounted ballots were discovered,

she said.

“I’ve been down-there for days, asking for provisional ballots, and I was

told there were none,” O’Connor said. “The Board said they didn’t exist.

“The FBI was down-there a week before, scouring the place, and I’m sure

they didn’t find them.”

When O’Connor and Struben arrived, she said they were told by Vokral that

it was “more like six” ballots that were found.

The ballots were found to have been from the South Amboy election after one

envelope was opened, and the five others were opened as-well, O’Connor said.

“After they opened one South Amboy envelope, why did they open more of

them?” she asked. “Is this the accepted practice, or did they vary from normal

procedure?”

O’Connor said the Board’s actions raise questions about whether their

actions were “inept” or if they constitute “gross negligence” because “these

ballots were mishandled four times.

“They were mishandled at the intial opening; the Board wouldn’t let me see

them before the recount; they wouldn’t let me see them at the recount, and

I asked for a copy of the questionable ballot, and they wouldn’t give it to

me,” she said. “Since then, I’ve learned that I am allowed to have a

copy.”

O’Connor’s request to go further, if approved by Paley, could include an

examination of any heretofore uncounted MIBs and provisional ballots, as

well as challenges of specific individual ballots which were counted.

At-least one business-owner who was openly registered to vote in South

Amboy while actually living in Sayreville and as many as three police officers

who live out-of-town but may have participated in South Amboy’s 2010 election

remain unresolved issues.

Meanwhile, Henry has said that he believed the contest “is finally over,”

so he intended to appoint a transition team to “work with Mayor O’Leary to

make this change as-smooth-as-possible and move-forward.”